Forever Is Not Long Enough
by The Demon
Summary: Based on the episode 'How Long Is Forever'. We all know what happened- but what went on between Starfire and Nightwing when they were alone together? One chapter, complete.


- TT -

With the help of her friends from the future, Starfire managed to thwart the villain Warp's attempt to steal a priceless antique. Using the vanquished thief's technology, the Titans of the future, reunited after more than twenty years of separation, helped Starfire return to her own time and set history right once again.

Upon returning home, Starfire told her friends about what she saw in the future, and what might happen if they let their friendship die.  
Gaining a new appreciation for their camaraderie, the Titans then vowed never to let anything tear them apart, lest the dire future that would arise from their drifting eventually come to pass.

"BALD!?" Beast Boy exclaimed in dismay, clutching at his hair with both hands. "I'm gonna go BALD!?"

After Starfire had passed around all the Kayibigang Friendship Beads,  
Robin turned to her with a curious look on his face.

"So... Nightwing, huh?" Robin asked with a pleased smirk.

And to his astonishment, Starfire turned away, blushing the deepest red from her cheeks to the very roots of her hair.

- TT -

Pure Evil Productions Presents...

"Forever Is Not Long Enough"  
PG-13 Version Only

by: MtB or simply, Mads

A Teen Titans fanfic hosted by the benevolent Racewing Productions 

Started: 12/12/04 Completed: 12/13/04 Castrated Version: 12/17/04

Disclaimers:

The Teen Titans and all its characters belong to DC Comics and Warner Bros. Animation, not the author of this ficlet. If the Teen Titans DID belong to me, do you think I'd waste my time writing? :D

This was inspired by the Teen Titans episode 'How Long Is Forever.  
The setup for this fic was there-- it would have been a crime for me to let it pass unremarked.

Heaven or Hell? Let's rock.

- TT -

He called himself Nightwing, so Starfire supposed she should as well.  
Still, it would always feel strange to her because he looked so much like Robin.

And yet... he didn't. Where the years had been cruel to Starfire's two other male teammates Cyborg and Beast Boy, solitary existence seemed to become the boy she once knew as Robin, if anything. He was taller now, for one, and looked harder somehow. He'd grown his hair down past his shoulders, and it swished behind him like a shiny black curtain whenever he moved. Dressed all in black, with but a single blue symbol of a bird adorning his chest, he looked like a shadow with a masked face.

And his looks weren't the only things that had changed.

Stronger, faster, infinitely deadlier and darker. He had turned into the man called only Nightwing.

And Starfire found that she was a little afraid of him.

"Do not be silly, Starfire," the Tamaranian princess chided herself as she followed the stranger she once knew into the forbidding lair he had fashioned for himself. "Nightwing is Robin, except a little... older.  
He is your friend no matter how different he has become."

The reassurances rang hollow in her own ears as she walked deeper into his new home. There were few lights, and what there were was only enough to move around by. They revealed nothing of what mysteries lay in this strange, cold fortress.

Starfire clutched tighter at the cloak around her shoulders.

They finally came to a large living area at the end of the hallway.  
Nightwing hadn't said a word to her the whole time.

"Robin," Starfire began to say, finally unable to contain her unease.  
She bit her lip. "I mean, Nightwing-"

"Here."

Starfire raised her eyes and found a slightly steaming cup being held before her. She accepted hesitantly and looked up at her companion,  
a question in her eyes.

"You might've noticed that you've arrived near the middle of winter"  
Nightwing said. "I thought you'd like something to warm you up a bit."

Starfire blinked and then smiled warmly. It felt like she hadn't smiled in years. "I thank you, Nightwing. This does indeed make me feel warm inside."

And when Nightwing smiled back, it was Robin's smile she saw on his face, and then Starfire wasn't afraid anymore.

- TT -

She sat at the table. Nightwing stood.

He listened carefully to Starfire's entire story, his face an unreadable mask of calculation. She told him about Warp, about how the thief had gone a hundred years back into the past to steal a precious timepiece, about how the Titans had been there to stop him, and about how she had thrown herself into the time portal in pursuit just as he was getting away.

She told him about how she'd made his time-travel device malfunction,  
about how she and Warp had ended up twenty years into the future instead of a hundred. Finally, she told him about the bleak world she found on the other side of twenty years without the Teen Titans, about Cyborg and his decrepit state of repair, Beast Boy and the desperate use of his shapeshifting ability to make a meager living. She told him about Raven... poor Raven, who had shut everything out when her friends left her, shattering her trust in the world forever.

Nightwing nodded once when she finished.

"The team wasn't the same without you," he said, eyes narrowed as he recalled. "Our friendship needed all of us to keep it together." He paused. "You especially," he added in a slightly softer tone.

His voice had changed as well, deepened.

"But... couldn't you have remained friends even with my absence?" Star-  
fire asked, distressed. She fought to keep the tears from spilling.  
"Cyborg... Beast Boy... Raven... I thought we would all be friends forever. How could this happen?"

"We tried, Star," Nightwing said, but he said it without emotion, as though speaking about a chapter in his life that he had already closed for good long ago. "For a while we managed, but it didn't last. When you never came back after the fight with Warp, we all blamed ourselves for it, and it affected how we dealt with each other. Eventually, we just decided to go our separate ways."

"I see." Starfire cast her eyes downward. "Then... I am to blame for it all..."

"No. You were just trying your best to stop Warp," Nightwing said,  
walking over to lean on the table. He put a hand under her chin, and lifted her face up towards his. Only when his thumb gently brushed against her cheek did Starfire realize she had started to cry. She pulled away and dried the rest of her tears herself.

Nightwing smiled down at her. "Besides," he said. "You haven't given up yet, have you?"

"No!" Starfire said fiercely, standing up suddenly, upsetting her chair but hardly noticing. "I haven't!" And then she frowned. "But I don't know where Warp-"

"I've got that covered," Nightwing said, losing the smile, and then striding past her towards an adjoining room. Starfire followed.

"Warp's hightailed it to an abandoned industrial lab where he can find the equipment he needs to repair his machine," Nightwing told her,  
indicating the electronic display on the wall. It revealed a map of the city, as well as a small red blip that pinpointed Warp's location.  
"I can track the unique power source he uses for time travel. When the signal gets stronger, that means he's close to finishing it."

"I am familiar with that place," Starfire said in delight mixed with relief. She turned to Nightwing before making for the exit. "Quickly,  
we must apprehend him with all haste before he-"

"We don't have to go get him right now," he said, cutting her off. He stood there, regarding her with his unreadable face, rigid stance.  
"Even if we captured him now, you'd still be stuck in the future with no way back. But if we leave him alone for a while..."

"If we wait... " Starfire began to say as Nightwing trailed off, "then he will have repaired his technology... and maybe perhaps I can use it for myself to get home?"

"Bingo," Nightwing said, smiling again.

"Oh, Robin!" Starfire cried out, forgetting herself and grabbing Nightwing's hands in hers. After a moment, she cocked her head to the side in thought. "But... what do we do while waiting?"

Nightwing's smile had vanished again, and this time, Starfire couldn't tell what he was thinking. He was wearing an expression unlike any she had ever seen before from the boy she remembered.

Nightwing held her chin again. "I never forgot how beautiful you are."

"What?" was all a confused Starfire could manage.

Nightwing turned away and walked back to the living quarters.

"Until Warp finishes repairs on his device... we talk. I haven't seen you in twenty years after all."

Starfire stood where she was, wondering whether or not she had imagined what Nightwing had just said earlier, or if it had really happened.

After a moment, she went to follow.

- TT -

When Cyborg left the team, he could hold well enough on his own for a while. He had the tactical edge, and he had the firepower to back it.  
It was just that, as time went by, he needed to consume more resources with every villain he had to take down alone.

"Without a team to help lighten the load of every battle, Cyborg's own upkeep inevitably overtook his ability to meet it," Nightwing murmured,  
eyes closed. He sipped at his own cup. Starfire was sitting again,  
but the plate Nightwing had set before her remained untouched.

Too proud to go to anyone else, Cyborg's sorties became more and more confined to the area around Titan Tower, until finally, he had to stay there indefinitely or completely deplete his power.

"Beast Boy didn't even manage what success Cyborg mustered, however short-lived," Nightwing went on, looking at the walls of his home, but seeing somewhere beyond. "He's always been too rash, too impulsive,  
too undisciplined. Without a team to keep him in line, he lost almost every battle he found himself in, until he couldn't bear the thought of failing to be a hero again."

Humiliated, and too ashamed to seek help, the changeling had decided that he'd already hit rock bottom and a vulgar living as a self-  
proclaimed human zoo couldn't possibly be any worse than being a wannabe crimefighter.

"And then there was Raven," Robin said, eyes narrowing into slits.

Devastated by their fractured fellowship, it wasn't long before a crazed Raven was inspiring fear in the hearts of many of the city's resident criminals and villains. Her emotional control eroded, the sorceress tore through her foes with a ferocity that terrified, and she had once nearly killed a group of adversaries in a fit of demonic rage. And then it came to a point where she could no longer distinguish between friend and enemy.

"So in a moment of lucid thought, she decided to shut herself in"  
Nightwing whispered. "And shut everything else out. Raven made it so that she wouldn't harm others anymore... but I don't like to think about what she's going through right now, in complete isolation with her pain." He paused. "In a way, Raven has always been the most vulnerable of us."

He turned when the sobs finally escaped Starfire-- tight, racking gasps that shook her whole body. He was beside her in an instant, a hand on her shoulder. Starfire reached up for it and squeezed gratefully.

She wiped her face with the heel of her palm and looked up at him in confusion.

"But you don't appear to have gotten any ill effect from the breaking of our friendship," she pointed out hesitantly. Her brow creased with doubt. "You are stronger now than what you were before. I am happy that you are alright, but... Could it be that you were always better off... without us?"

Again, a shadow descended on Nightwing's face, a cloud that concealed all thought and feeling from those who could see. Nightwing looked at her with that expressionless face of his, a face that revealed nothing.

"Was I?"

He stood up straight, eyes never leaving Starfire's.

"I watched helplessly as my team fell apart around me. The people who I thought of as my closest friends began to disappear one by one, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it."

Nightwing lowered his eyes, and his fist clenched of its own accord.  
His discomfort was obvious-- the boy had always had the most difficulty expressing his deeper emotions to others, even back when he was still Robin. Starfire watched, almost holding her breath.

"I... I lost myself in my work after they were all gone," he finally said. "Sometimes, I didn't even notice that weeks had already passed.  
Sometimes months. And that was good. If I could just jump from bad guy to bad guy, if I kept improving my weapons and equipment, I wouldn't have to think about it. I wouldn't have to remember." He paused. "But sometimes, when there was no one left to fight, no one left to beat... I'd have nothing to do but remember."

His fist shook. Starfire put a hand on it. It stilled.

"I am here now," the young girl said quietly.

"Yes," Nightwing said. "You are here now." He looked at her. "And you haven't aged a day."

The older Cyborg had said as much to her when they met in the ruins of Titan Tower. Starire's Tamaranian blood made for unnaturally brilliant red hair, a crimson luster that burned like burnished copper when the light shone on it, and her eyes were dark green gemstones set in light jade. She was a slim girl, but her chest and hips were already curved in the gentle manner of girls her age.

She was all of sixteen years old.

Starfire began to get up, looking towards the operations room. "We had better see if Warp has or has not already managed to finish fixing his machine. If we don't get to him in time-"

Starfire was an alien princess powerful enough to crush boulders. So when a hand closed down firmly on her wrist as she turned, it was sheer surprise that made her stop short.

Also, Nightwing had grown rather strong over the years.

Starfire looked to the hand on her arm, and then to Nightwing.

"Is anything the matter, Nightwing?" Starfire asked, blinking.

"Stay." His voice was half a command, half a plea. "Please. Stay."

Suddenly, Starfire felt like crying all over again. "Oh, no,  
Nightwing... Robin... I am so very sorry. But I must go back to my friends-- my past friends, so that we won't all go away, and we can all be friends again in this future. I have to fix all this, make it right. I have to change history back so that-"

"I want you to stay HERE, with ME, in THIS time," Nightwing said, teeth clenched, grip iron. Starfire flinched away.

Nightwing let go of her wrist.

"But I'm not going to ask you to," he said.

Almost completely bewildered now, Starfire could only stare wide-eyed as Nightwing approached and held her by both her shoulders. He had become much taller in twenty years, and he gazed down at her now, deep into the alien princess's large, startlingly green eyes.

"I know. You have to go back and set things right," the young man murmured, running a hand through her hair absently. Starfire stiffened involuntarily at the strange and uncharacteristic display of affection.  
"You have to finish the job with Warp, and you have a responsibility to try and keep the team together. It's just..."

His hand left her hair to cradle her cheek.

"The Robin you left will never realize just how much he wanted to do this until he goes twenty long years without you."

And then he kissed her, long and deep and tender.

When they parted, Starfire could feel the heat on her face where she blushed, the wetness on her lips where he kissed her, and her heart where it was fluttering in her chest.

"Nightwing... Robin... Nightwing... I..."

"Warp told you that he went back to the past to steal the timepiece,  
and that history said it disappeared because he stole it," Nightwing said, still holding her. "If you go back to your time and stop him,  
his future will cease to exist. Or perhaps it will simply go on without him."

He held her closer now, almost close enough for another kiss.

"If you go back to your time and keep the Titans together, then maybe this future will never exist. But if it goes on..." Nightwing's voice cracked when he continued, the fingers of one hand wrapped tight around Starfire's possessively. "Then I will have lost you again-- forever."

Her heart went out to him, and she pulled her hand away from his, only to throw both arms around his neck to embrace him fiercely, savagely.  
Her feet left the ground when she hugged him, he was so tall now. She felt his arms wrap themselves around her back, and she held him even tighter, weeping.

"At least this time..." Nightwing, Robin was saying, "I get to say goodbye. Goodbye, Starfire."

They pulled apart to look at each other, and this time, it was she who kissed him.

- TT -

Author's Notes:

As was mentioned in the title block, this fic was largely inspired by the Teen Titans episode 'How Long Is Forever?'. Also, it was triggered by this author's unnaturally astute lolicon radar, and whipped into completion by an idle dare one Sunday night. You see, I have a nasty habit of having browsers open and ganking jpegs and gifs from image boards while writing. As you can probably be led to expect, that isn't very helpful towards productivity.

All I had written was the prologue then, but I was confident that I could finish it fast, given the simplicity of the plot involved. Of course, I completely ignored how I've thought that before of certain other 'short' projects, and yet they languish for months at a time.

I mentioned my hope to my benevolent fic-boss, the eternal Racewing,  
and full knowing my tendency to be distracted to inefficiency, dared me to finish the fic within the night. DOUBLE DOG DARED me.

Well, shit.

So here it is, after pounding on it for three straight hours, I have my quickie, and the dare has been met, fulfilled, signed, and submitted.  
Looks like I'm still Mr. I-Can-Write-A-Lemon-In-A-Day, Race. A title which you yourself gave me, by the way. :D

Anyway, Teen Titans--

Given the exceedingly tempting setup of the story behind 'How Long Is Forever?', how could I not tap its potential for statutory smuttage? I mean, here we have sweet, innocent Starfire, tenderly teenaged, and distraught about losing her loved ones-- and then we have someone who is not only a familiar face, but what One True Pairing fans will say is the ONLY face for Starfire's eyes, except full grown now, and oh, so tall, dark and mysterious. Given that chemistry, alone together for an undisclosed period of time? This shit wrote itself.

This is what I will say to the jury, and the defense shall rest.

EDIT 12/17/04: This is the castrated version of the lemon, meaning that I've pruned all the sexual scenes out of it. If anyone wants it, just do a little jigsaw puzzle action with this here broken link:

h t t p : unholywastes. defenestrate. net/ randomcrap/ forever. txt

And now some visual aids I prepared specifically for this presentation.  
Yes, sometimes I go all out for an idea that I particularly like (and isn't too much of a hassle to draw).

h t t p: unholywastes. defenestrate. net/ randomcrap/ star. jpg h t t p: unholywastes. defenestrate. net/ randomcrap/ nightstar. jpg h t t p: unholywastes. defenestrate. net/ randomcrap/ starnightfin. jpg

Please, if you liked this batch of guilty pleasures, then drop me a line at It would do me wonders of joy. :D

Hope y'all enjoyed this here now.

This is Mads, the Insufferable Beast, Lemonranger Orange, signing off.

Godspeed.

-MtB; Forever Is Not Long Enough, 12/12/04-12/13/04

- TT -

They had one final moment with each other before Starfire had to step into the portal.

"There's no time," Nightwing smiled down gently at her, handing her the timepiece Warp had stolen.

Starfire took the relic, but her eyes were on his.

"Nightwing," she said, in a voice so low that nobody else could hear.  
"Robin. You told me before that I had to go back because it was my duty, my responsibility to the team to try and keep it together. But that isn't true."

Starfire turned, teary-eyed, to look at those who had reunited to vanquish Warp. Cyborg. Beast Boy. Raven. They were all here. Every one of them. Together again. She smiled.

"I want to go back and keep us together," she said, the tears running down her cheeks, "because I love you, my friends."

And then the portal closed, and she was gone.

"Goodbye, Star," Nightwing said after her in farewell. He looked over his shoulder towards the group behind him.

"Long time no see, Raven!" Beast Boy was saying, slapping the witch on the back. This caused a great, roaring black power surge to leap from Raven and try to devour the startled changeling as he ran around in circles to avoid it. Cyborg was dancing around, protesting loudly as he held his powerpack aloft, away from the melee.

"Don't worry, Star," Nightwing told the empty air. He looked up at the sky. "I'm not alone anymore."

- TT - 


End file.
